Emily's list

Eveleth stacks her doughnuts next to Danforth's collection

by Leon Nigrosh

EMILY EVELETH, A PAINTER SELECTS at the Danforth Museum of Art, 123 Union Avenue, Framingham, through July 31.

How many times have you gone to an art exhibition and thought to yourself, "Hey, I could put together a show like this"? Well, Linda Stiegleder, Danforth Museum director, has given artist Emily Eveleth just such an opportunity. Since September, Eveleth has been rummaging around the museum's storage area, perusing more than 200 paintings and works on paper, a small part of the Danforth's permanent collection. After putting in a number of intense 6- to 8-hour days in the stacks, she describes her experience: "Originally, I just picked things that I liked. It was only later that I developed some sort of a theme. I began to see how some of the pieces related to my own work -- particularly the portraits." And here is where the fun for museum visitors begins.

The key painting for the entire exhibit, Eveleth says, is a 17th-century oil-on-panel portrait of a German gentleman. This gilt-framed work is a typical academic representation of a man of means rendered with exactitude and care. Facial details have been built up with layers of thin paint. Great precision was used in painting the man's lace collar, jewelry, and other personal effects. The portrait is firmly anchored in a black background, which lends an air of power to the entire image. On discovering this picture, Eveleth says she immediately thought of her own painting Proscenium/Lemon Creme, a four-foot by seven-foot oil-on-canvas of a doughnut. What? Doughnuts equal German nobles? In this instance, the answer is yes.

Eveleth has been drawing and painting doughnuts for some time. She has always thought of these images as portraits, never as still lifes and particularly not as food. In Proscenium/Lemon Creme, she presents the puffy cake head-on at eye level. The image is softly lighted by the classic single-light source with additional reflected illumination, helping to capture all the surface nuances. The ground fades swiftly from gray to an inky black background, forcing us to concentrate on the details of the subject itself in much the the same manner as the German painting. Both pictures take us beyond the immediate subject and into the realm of distinguished portraiture.

During her backroom search, Eveleth also found original prints by James Abbott McNeil Whistler and Reginald Marsh. With each of these she presents examples of her own work which relate in style and intent, if not technique and subject. Whistler's 1859 etching of friend Drouet, Sculpteur is a serious portrait executed with a quick hand that concentrates on the young man's intense face. Eveleth's graphite-and-oil-on-mylar drawing Sweet Bun contains a similar swiftness of line and visual intensity in her rendition of a singular pastry. Marsh's 1947 etching Girls at Coney Island and Eveleth's drawing Single share a comparable use of line and shape to develop their equally engaging subjects. The comparison between Walt Kuhn's 1929 ink drawing Reclining Woman and Eveleth's Two Jelly is readily apparent. Although the subject matter differs, both pictures are adroitly rendered with a minimum of lines.

Originally trained as a landscape painter (something she still does each summer), Eveleth has also chosen to display several paintings and photographs of this genre from the museum's hidden collection alongside samples of her own work. Herman Pohle's 19th-century Boy Fishing in Mountain Stream is a perfect example of the type of labor-intensive painting that was so popular in its day. This 40-inch by 40-inch canvas is laden with lush, verdant color. Abundant trees frame the waterway, which meanders from the pale purple mountains in the distance. Cottony clouds skitter across the azure sky. There's so much landscape, we can hardly find the boy. Even though Eveleth's eight-inch by 16-inch landscapes are dwarfed by this painting, her swift brush brings life to her impressionistic trees and sky. And a slit of red -- a tiny shed roof -- brings everything to scale and focus as does Pohle's little boy.

There's more to this show, other drawings and photos that Eveleth has juxtaposed in an engaging experiment to see if we'll will make the same connections as she or if we'll create different ones of our own.

The Danforth Museum of Art is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Call 620-0050.